On 11 Dec 98, at 14:32, Ross Wilcock wrote: > There is a > conspiracy afoot to stop people communicating - so I wondered if this was > another aspect of it. This is of course a serious human rights violation - > apart from the obvious crime involved. > > So actually I am relieved that there is a simpler explanation for this List > problem. Well, you see, that's the problem with these terrorist tactics. For all you know, it _could_ be part of the conspiracy. If I were an evil dictator scum and wanted to cut off email access to a section of the Internet, all I would need to do is send spam from there and voila, blacklisters all over the world will take care of isolating your little piece of the Internet for you. Because these blocks do not block only the originator of the spam, they block everyone who shares the same network, guilty and innocent alike, and usually there are more innocents than guilties. Here is an actual quote from the RBL site: "While we try to limit that connectivity loss to only networks which are friendly or neutral toward spam, sometimes a spammer hides in and amongst nonspammers so as to share a more positive fate with those nonspammers. What actually happens is that the nonspammers share an unpleasant and negative fate with spammers in that case. In other words, if you are not willing to occasionally throw out a baby with the bathwater (figuratively speaking of course), then the MAPS RBL is not for you." They're thinking that it's worth keeping [log in to unmask] from emailing her mom in order to prevent [log in to unmask] from sending spam. Big deal, pick up the phone and call your mom. But what if [log in to unmask] has a baby dying of cancer and her doctor suggests a controversial procedure, so she tries to write to the ped-onc list to find out if anyone else has tried that procedure? What if there's a block between her and the one other person on the list who can help her? Is that really worth it? The arrogance of cutting off all of Chechnya because a spam originated from Warsaw -- and feeling justified about it, no less -- makes me want to vomit. At the bottom of many of the RBL pages, it says "Loss of connectivity hurts us all. Spam hurts us all even more." I say they've got it backwards. If someone can find a way to reliably cut off ONLY the spammers, then I'm all for it. Otherwise, I'll handle one spammer at a time, without punishing large groups of people for the sins of a few. Francoise